Every Dog has his Day
It's not everyday that the ghost of your father informs you that he was murdered by your uncle in a successful attempt to steal his throne and his wife - thus usurping your position as rightful king. You could say Hamlet was having a bad heir day. No wonder the Royal Shakespeare Company's latest production at the Barbican has him swapping the solace of a cigar for something more potent.
This Hamlet is a thirtysomething, pot smoking, 9mm-automatic wielding, sardonic malcontent, in keeping with the new interpretations of the Bard's work we have come to expect. (Baz Luhrman's film Romeo and Juliet, of course, spawned a number of other star-studded films of the plays, and brought Shakespeare to life before less high culture audiences.)
Hamlet, performed originally around 1600, was a play that reflected the political and religious uncertainty of its times. Henry VIII, father of Elizabeth I (the 'present' monarch), had married his brother's widow Katherine of Aragon; old Hamlet's ghost speaks of the Catholic notion of purgatory while his son studies at a school of opposing views - the Lutheran university at Wittenberg.
Yet while he is a man of his times, the latest Hamlet also speaks deeply into our contemporary world. Today's audience may find comparisons in the strained family relations that Hamlet finds himself embroiled in; but of greater note in a postmodern age, as Germaine Greer points out in the production notes, is the apparent tension between truth and lies, between doubt and certainty.
Much of the plot revolves around deceit and subterfuge; and while being a 'voice of truth', Hamlet lends a certain scepticism towards the role fate has seemingly marked out for him. The audience plays witness as he questions our meaning and purpose while caught within this 'mortal coil'.
Hamlet also raises a timeless question that resonates specifically within our own era. We live in an age in which our philosophers have transcended the grammar of identity crisis, to announce 'the death of man', 'the death of the author', the 'deconstruction of the subject', the 'displacement of the ego' and the 'dissolution of self-identity'. In which we learn that 'being' is perpetually about 'becoming'.
To be or not to be? Now, that is a question.
Jason Gardner
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.
